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Comment by biztos | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't that just end up applying to whatever subset of employees are up for living in Alabama?

Sure, if you can grow that subset to 100% then you can keep all the pizza for yourself, but the reason tech salaries are so high is the companies are that profitable.

If Zuckerberg is paying Alabama rates to everyone, it will be trivially easy to poach talent from him, and he knows this, so while he might have in mind a pool of "superfungibles" making $ALABAMA in $WHEREVER, you will not see Big Tech start slashing the compensation of the people they want to keep.

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To be honest, my OP was a little hyperbolic. It's more like you'll be less able to demand a wage premium because you're willing/able to live in a high COL place. But you still have lots of other attributes/skills which are valuable.

I already live in a low COL location and successfully demand Bay Area salary. So obviously I don't see a problem with this. Most people all across the country will see no appreciable change here. The only people who need to be concerned are people who are unable to demand a high salary based on their attributes other than geography.

This to me is the real argument: those who can demand a high salary regardless of geography, and those who can only demand a high salary _because_ of geography.

The mistake is many people in the latter group think they are in the former.

That was so much more perfectly succinct than me. Thank you for capturing it so well.

Thanks, that puts it much better than I did.

Like many, I think I'm in the former group and will allow myself a little Schadenfreude if the latter group gets an "adjustment." Unless it turns out I'm wrong. :-O

This concisely captures an important element of the dynamic. I am often offered extremely high wages, even by Silicon Valley standards, to work remotely from wherever I wish. And some of these companies are not in expensive locales. They aren’t always paying for geography.

There are many skills and levels of talent for which there is always a global shortage.

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